Srd January, 1917. 



ANCIENT MAEINERS. 

 By G. Elijot Smith, M.A., M.D., F.R.S. 



(Abstract.) 



At the close of the fifteenth century Vasco da Gama realized 

 the dream of Prince Henry the Navigator. He was the first 

 captain from Western Europe to take his ships around the Cape 

 into the Indian Ocean. 



What was virtually a new world was thus revealed to the 

 peoples of the West, for the recollection of the earlier Oriental 

 enterprises of the sailors of the Eastern Mediterranean had 

 become dimmed in the mists of the distant past ; and the 

 commercial intercourse with Asia had passed almost entirely into 

 the hands of intermediaries. Asiatic caravans brought the 

 produce of the Orient to Tyre and Alexandria, and Venetian 

 merchants distributed it along the coasts of Europe. The 

 fanciful tales brought back by the rare European adventurers 

 who penetrated far into Asia only served to enhance the mystery 

 in which it had become veiled. 



Thus the intrusion of the Portugese into the Indian Ocean 

 was really the opening up of a new world to the people of Europe. 



Great, therefore, was the surprise of Vasco da Gama, when 

 he entered this new and mysterious domain in the year 1498, to 

 find at Mozambique four ocean-going ships manned by Arabs. 

 In spite of their obvious superficial differences in appearance 

 these ships were planned and built on essentially the same lines 

 as those which the great Portugese sailor himself had brought 

 into Mozambique ; and, although for many centuries there had 

 been little if any communication between the respective groups 

 of ship builders, the arbitrary nature of the essential plan of 



